Meet a Cicerone® - AC Jesús Mártir of Baja Canning

Jesús Mártir is the first "graduate" of the Beer Scholar Advanced Cicerone® Coaching Program!

About nine months ago, AC Scott Fielder and I launched our Advanced Cicerone® Coaching Program, the first of its kind, with an initial cohort of ten amazing beer geeks from all over the world and all over the beer industry. Jesús is the first of the bunch to pass the exam and get the title of Advanced Cicerone® on his resume! Huge congrats to Jesús!

Jesús is based in Tijuana, Mexico. He's an electromechanical engineer by training and says, "what is brewing if not applied engineering?" He entered the beer industry in 2017 and spent several years brewing for Kaminari Brewing. He thought he was out of the beer game for a period...but a friend at Baja Canning pulled him back in with a great job offer! Jesús is currently the Operations Manager at Baja Canning in Tijuana, where he's managed the packaging of nearly 3 million beers to date!

Jesús passed the Certified Cicerone® exam in late 2022 and passed the Advanced Cicerone® exam in early 2024, after going through our AC Coaching Program. Jesús is also a BJCP Certified beer, cider, and mead judge, an American Cider Association Certified Cider Guide, and he's got an Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD) General Certificate in Beer Packaging, Can Specialist. Not only all that...phew, I'm running out of breath over here....Jesús is currently pursuing a Master's in Brewing and Distilling from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in Scotland!

Basically, Jesús is an absolute superstar. He's been traveling all over Central and South American to judge major beer competitions and he's now one of just five Spanish speaking Advanced Cicerones® in the world – though we're expecting to see several more Spanish speaking ACs come out of our coaching program in the next year!

Scott & I sat down with Jesús to talk about his experience in the Advanced Cicerone® Coaching Program, his career path, and what fuels his drive for knowledge. If you're thinking about pursuing some certifications in the booze biz, and especially if you're wondering about going for the AC, listen up!

The “Meet a Cicerone” podcast is about sitting down with folks who are “all in on beer” to understand why folks do it, how they're applying what they learn, and how it has enabled them to make their own futures and careers. Let's do this.

P.S. If you’re interested in becoming an Advanced Cicerone in the easiest and most efficient way possible, please reach out to me at [email protected] or Scott at [email protected] right away so we can start getting you ready to join the next cohort of the Beer Scholar Advanced Cicerone® Coaching Program! Thanks so much for listening! –Chris

Get a free Study Guide for the Certified Cicerone® Exam here: https://www.thebeerscholar.com/certified-cicerone-study-guide

Episode transcript

Chris (00:00)
Alright, well, I am stoked to be here with Scott Fielder, who teaches the Beer Scholar Advanced Cicerone Coaching Program and our first graduate, I guess you would say, Jesús Mártir, Advanced Cicerone Jesús Mártir. Dude, congratulations.

Jesus Martir (00:12)
Hehehehe

Thank you so much and I mean I really mean it like thank you so much for all the help you guys did I mean it's not an easy exam and getting to exam day like a little bit calmer really helps.

Chris (00:32)
Awesome, man. So we just hung out a bunch for like six months, a little more than six months. And hopefully it was super helpful. I want to hear you know, I want to hear about why you decided to go for it and how it's been helping you to do all this education and you know what your vision is for where you're where you're going.

Jesus Martir (00:59)
Well, okay, yeah, so I've been in the industry since 2017, so a couple of years now. I'm a mechanical engineer, well, electromechanical engineer. So what is beer if it's not just applied engineering, right? So I really like that about it. I've been a home brewer since 2016. Always just trying to be objective about beer. And...

So the first thing that came to mind was studying for the Beer Judge Certification Program, the BJCP. Just getting to know all the technical stuff and things like that. And well, I'm a beer, cider, and mead judge now, so that's good. And I basically just came to the program basically by proxies, because a lot of professionals in the industry are...

Chris (01:39)
Nice. Very cool.

Jesus Martir (01:51)
affiliated basically to the certified, Cicerone Certification Program and I just did the Certified Beer Server and it was like, okay, maybe it's just service, maybe it's not for me, we'll see. Then so I'm based in Tijuana, Mexico, so I can cross the border to San Diego and it seems like they have a lot of tasting exams, at least once a year for Certified level. So one time I was just checking my calendar, I was like, okay.

I'll give it a try. I'll do the tasting and if it goes well, I'll maybe try the written exam. I went, I did it, it went well, so I started studying and at least the eye -opener for me was I got to learn about a lot of like surrounding stuff, not really like making beer, but all the things that surround beer that really was helpful like a lot and really opened my eyes about everything.

maybe I wouldn't like stumble upon it if I didn't start doing this like certified level so

Chris (02:55)
Yeah, it forces you to kind of stretch out a bit. You know, it's like, when I took it, I was also a home brewer. I knew nothing. I had never even poured a beer from a faucet before. So, you know, the service stuff was absolutely new to me.

Jesus Martir (03:11)
Yeah, because I mean, I knew about glasses because I mean, I like to drink beer and I like to do it proper, but I didn't even know how to clean a glass, like a beer clean glass. Like.

Chris (03:23)
Yeah, why would you? Yeah, yeah, I know it forces you to learn a lot of stuff forced us not only to go deeper on the things you already know, but to stretch out a bit And, and you actually you, you passed the Certified exam in 2022, like late 2022, right?

Jesus Martir (03:41)
Yeah, so it was late 2022. Like I remember I went out of the exam. I was like, okay, I think I'm done. It's good. I heard like some people talking about the Advanced level exam. I was like, maybe that's not for me. We'll see. And then the same thing happened like just months after like I saw my calendar. Well, Advanced Cicerone Tasting Exam. Okay, let's give it a try. And well, here I am.

Chris (04:08)
Very cool, very cool, man. So do you know how many Advanced level Cicerones are there in Mexico at this point?

Jesus Martir (04:17)
So just in this like exam cycle, like a friend of mine, Ricardo Castro, he passed the Advanced Ciceorne in November I think last year. And in this cycle, so it was Ignacio Lomeli, which is a friend of mine, and me, we passed. And on 2015, I think there was Alejandro Cortez that passed. So there are now four Advanced Cicerones in Mexico.

Chris (04:32)
Nice.

Nice. Congrats. That's very cool.

Jesus Martir (04:49)
Thanks. And that makes us five Spanish -speaking Advanced Cicerones, because Chema in Costa Rica is as well.

Scott Fielder (04:57)
Hmm.

Chris (04:57)
Right. Well, and we have, let's see, we have several more coming out of our program in the next, you know, in the next year. You know, I won't name names because I don't want anyone to start hitting them up, asking them about whether they passed or not. But yeah, that's cool, man. That's very cool. Yeah, like, so you actually did some professional brewing back in the day as well.

Jesus Martir (05:23)
Yeah, so I was a home brewer in 2016, started there and on 2017, I started as a professional brewer with a friend of mine in Kaminari Brewing. I was there for like almost a year. I just wanted to learn more, so I had to get a lot of hands on. Then I left a little bit of the industry just to work as an engineer. And...

Couple months in working in construction I got a call from a friend of mine to work at a... They were actually doing like this big production brewery here in Tijuana which was a joint thing with Baja Brewing and Cerveceria Ramuri and I went there as a professional brewer and stayed there for almost two years I was there as a professional brewer and also I did a lot of like maintaining stuff

Chris (05:45)
Hmm.

Jesus Martir (06:10)
I was there for basically three years as a professional brewer. Then I left the industry, again, started teaching a little bit. I'm a son of teachers. My whole family is teachers, so it just came to be. And then I got a call. And...

from other people, like just networking, whatever. And now I'm the operations manager at Baja Canning, which is a mobile canning company. Almost two million cans now, so. Almost.

Chris (06:38)
Yeah, but two million cans, dang, Baja Canning, very cool. So now you're the operations manager at Baja Brewing or Baja Canning. And, you know, I just want to mention like our, in our cohorts in the Advanced Cicerone Coaching Program, we have like so many cool people with so many different backgrounds and like high levels of knowledge and all these different things. Like, you know, you're a pro brewer or have been a pro brewer.

We had another guy in your cohort who was like a draft tech, you know, and just the list kind of goes on. We have someone who like owns a bottle shop and you know what I mean? Just all these different perspectives on beer, different areas of the industry. And I think that, I don't know, hopefully you saw, I thought it seemed, it seemed like the coming together of a lot of knowledge and you know, folks were able to kind of help each other when we would do our lessons or our tastings together.

you know, sometimes people have really insightful stuff to throw out there.

Jesus Martir (07:44)
Yeah, I mean, it was really helpful because for me it was just like a melting pot of knowledge, of beer knowledge. And it was really fun for everyone involved. I mean, like, I had the opportunity to meet, like, some people from the cohorts and it's always enthusiastic just to go and just hug them and just talk about beer because that's all we do, basically.

Chris (08:07)
That's another. Yeah. That's another cool thing is that like study group vibe, right? Everyone's like getting together in the real world now and stuff. And that's just so cool. I also want to congratulate Scott. I mean, Scott really put together this program and teaches everybody. And I mean, you're the first of, I think many success stories, Jesús, but, um, you know, Scott definitely. Thanks, man.

Scott Fielder (08:29)
Well, and obviously as somebody who put together the program, I think I, you know, one thing I really want to know, well, a couple of things. First, what would, did you find to be the most valuable resource that we provided? What would you, what would you say? Like looking back? Cause we offer a lot of things. There's the cohort part we talked about where you're just meeting people. That's already a huge thing. We have study schedules. We have all these, all kinds of different videos. We've got flashcards. We've got practice exams of all of those things. If you had to pick one.

Jesus Martir (08:43)
Thank you.

Scott Fielder (08:59)
that you thought was the most valuable to you personally, what would you say it was?

Jesus Martir (09:04)
So for me, I think basically like the practice exams and basically the one -on -ones, like the time I have with other professionals I can talk about, like you know your stuff and I know you know your stuff and I'm glad to just come and basically ask whatever I think I need and you can just basically steer me to the way that it needs to be for the exam. And not just the exam, just basically for beer knowledge. I mean, it's not the same knowing than...

just really knowing how to translate that into words. Because it's really hard, at least for me, it was really hard. So really just the calmness of just going into exam, knowing what to expect. And then not thinking it was a fluke, like, oh, maybe if I get asked about this, like, no. You basically have to know everything about it to do it.

for me was like really really helpful and just like the enthusiasm and the like the well English is my second language so it's coming now

Chris (10:09)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's gotta make it extra challenging.

Scott Fielder (10:17)
Yeah. And then the other thing too is, do you remember when you filled out your application, what you said you were the most worried about going into the exam? Cause that's one question we ask folks. Cause if there's something weird that we haven't thought of, we want to make sure, you know, we actually think of it. But cause I've got your scores in front of me. And so I want to see what you thought you were the most worried about. And then what you got ended up getting on that section of the exam.

Chris (10:24)
Hehehehehe

Jesus Martir (10:25)
So...

So I mean for me it was a beer and food pairing because I think every level you go up in the certification program just basically it steps up like exponentially at least for me I think. I think the gap that is between a Certified Beer Server and a Certified Cicerone it's almost the same basically the same between a Certified Cicerone and Advanced Cicerone at least on knowledge.

I mean, for me, I didn't have much experience in that. And I think the cohort, the AC coaching exam really is like structured away so that you get to experience more and hands on and really start like just losing your fear and going into that. Because I knew styles will be like time demanding, but I knew it was just I need to sit and study for hours each day, maybe. But those things like,

I wouldn't know how a wheat beer behaves if I boil it for two hours. I don't know.

Scott Fielder (11:42)
Yeah. Well, between your MCQs and your essays, you got an average of somewhere in the between 85 and 86 range for pairing.

Chris (11:55)
Yeah, yeah, killed it.

Jesus Martir (11:58)
Yeah, thanks. For me, I think it's really helpful because I remember I did my essays on that and they weren't really great. Scott saw them and he graded them and he made a lot of good notes on them and then it really helped me on the exam too.

Chris (12:19)
yeah I'm trying to remember didn't you spend like didn't you spend like a ridiculous amount of time with the flashcards too?

Scott Fielder (12:19)
That's awesome.

He's one of our, yeah, he was, cause for people who don't know, we use Brainscape. So we don't use, we don't use Quizlet. We use this really cool app that's like developed by people who are like scientists and like know about how people learn the best. And they put that to use in their, in their app. And Chris and I can tell as admins, we can tell how many hours people have spent. And you know, Jesús was one of those people where like eventually it stops tracking it in hours and it starts interpreting it into days.

Jesus Martir (12:29)
I think so.

Chris (12:56)
Right.

Scott Fielder (12:56)
You know because it just adds up and then yeah, and so Jesús was one of those people who I think you know you look at it and it says like a week or ten days or whatever and you're like that doesn't seem that long but it's like not like an eight -hour day like we spent studying but like 24 hours so that's like a lot of that's like a lot of hours So it doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think about it in that way. It's like that's actually a lot of time studying flashcards

Chris (13:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, I haven't I haven't looked at it super recently, but I think last time I just did a check to see like, I don't know out of curiosity, like who was really using the flashcards the most. I think it said that you had done like, like four full days worth or something. So a lot of hours, but you know, if you make it a habit and you're, you're only do, I mean, you only need to do 20 minutes a day for six months or who knows, whatever it is. I'm not doing the math in my head, but.

Jesus Martir (13:36)
You

Chris (13:50)
you know, if you turn it into a habit, that's what ends up happening. And I'm sure you knew the vital stats for everything.

Jesus Martir (13:59)
I mean it's always a fun party trick if you say like I remember that the I don't know the ABV of a British Strong Ale is 5.5 to 8.0 I don't know it works but yeah I mean for me it was a habit because in my machine like the sanitation process takes 20 minutes so I knew I had 20 minutes each day to at least do that so that's what I did then I think it worked out.

Chris (14:08)
Right.

I love that. I always, you know, kind of like semi jokingly, I'm just like, you know, do them when you're on the toilet, like whatever it takes, whatever it takes, you know, make it a habit. If you commute by subway, do it on the subway, like whatever.

So that's cool. Yeah, the results speak for themselves. We can definitely see that folks who spend a lot of time with the flashcards tend to be doing real well.

So yeah, what's the thoughts on? Well, Scott, do you have any more questions before we move on?

Scott Fielder (14:53)
No, no, just had those two.

Chris (14:55)
Yeah, yeah, man. I, you know, on the one hand, of course, I would love to just talk all about the Advanced Cicerone Coaching Program. Uh, I want people to know, like this thing is successful. We're finally starting to see some results. Uh, Jesús is the first and you killed it. We have a bunch of other people, uh, signed up for exams and their scores will be coming in. I'm certainly going to invite them all to do this.

you know, do an interview with Scott and I. Because, you know, I think that folks, especially once you get past the Certified level, people are like curious about why, you know, what's the benefit going to be? How's it going to help them? Obviously, there are plenty of people out there who just love to learn and just want to do it for themselves. But I think everyone in the industry kind of recognizes like what Certified Cicerone means like a manager knows what you're capable of, but you show up with Advanced.

or even Master whatever on your resume, you probably have some ideas about how you want to apply that maybe in an entrepreneurial manner, or maybe you're going to try and carve out a special position for yourself at some larger brewery or something like that. But that's the thing is I actually just want to sit down with folks and ask them like, what's the plan? So what are you thinking?

Jesus Martir (16:21)
I mean.

So at least for me, the certification has, like for me personally, it's been given me a lot of opportunities to get to know the world. So I'm a beer judge and like basically like your resume speaks for like, there's a lot of people in the world that don't know you. Like I have a lot of friends, but still like they don't know me. And then you send in the resume and they say like Certified Cicerone started opening doors for me and then Advanced Cicerone like I have more invites coming. So I've been to like basically Central America and South America, just judging beers.

one week at a time. So, I mean, it's tough. It's a tough job that I have to do, but someone has to do it, right? Because I mean, to like, yeah, with some really great people that I can call friends now. Like, so I have into Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia. I have received invites for Peru and Costa Rica. So I needed to know the world one country at a time.

Scott Fielder (16:57)
That's right.

Chris (16:57)
Someone has to travel to beautiful places and judge beer?

Scott Fielder (17:01)
That's right. I'm Judge Beery, yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

Chris (17:18)
That's really cool, man. That's really cool. And you're obviously gonna end up networking with all these industry people and creating opportunities for yourself. And yeah, I mean, that's rad. That's rad. I need to start coming down some of those.

Jesus Martir (17:28)
I mean, I think that's a... I mean, that's a thing that a lot of people, at least the beer industry is so small. You just don't see jobs posted on some place. Most of them, they don't post them. So it's just the people you know. So at least... I mean...

anyone can go to the Cicerone Certification Program Directory and just type in your name and see if you're certified or not.

Chris (18:01)
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's such a good point that these certifications I was, I was just talking with Aaron Gore, who is an Advanced Cicerone who lives in South Carolina, pretty active on social media and stuff. And he was pointing out that, you know, obviously a big issue in beer right now is, is representation and diversity and job access and this kind of stuff. And I think he made

a great point that this kind of these kind of certifications, you know, it may not seem fair, but it will help people kick the doors open and smash glass ceilings and kind of, you know, it is it is like, it is something that on a resume kind of speaks for itself and is going to help, you know, anybody get a great job. And so I think, you know, you don't you don't generally have you're not going to have people just reaching out to you to

ask you to judge international beer competitions unless you're doing stuff like that. You know, unless you're building those sensory skills and you know, putting yourself out there, continuing your education. I think that's just an important point to make.

Yeah, I don't know.

Jesus Martir (19:14)
Yeah, I mean, even among peers, like if you get to know new people in your life and he's like in Certified level, you know he puts his time in and he knows his stuff for beer at least.

Chris (19:28)
Yep. Yeah. And, and, you know, like your point about just sort of networking your way into jobs, you know, that is not just how the beer industry works. That's how every industry works. So, you know, just showing up and mixing it up with folks like at these kinds of competitions can be, can be huge for that. So that's exciting. Yeah. Do you have any like grand plans or are you just kind of, you're just kind of.

sticking with what you got going on for now and seeing seeing where career takes you.

Jesus Martir (20:04)
So in this January I actually started my Masters in Brewing and Distilling in Scotland so just trying to be more professional one thing at a time.

Chris (20:10)
Hey! Nice!

Scott Fielder (20:11)
Nice.

Chris (20:18)
That's amazing. And Tijuana has like a killer scene, right?

Jesus Martir (20:21)
I I I mean, Tijuana, all of Baja California, which is basically like the region, all of Baja. I mean, Tijuana, Ensenada, Mexicali, it's a great beer scene. There's a lot of cool places and basically there's a lot of good food and a lot of good beer. So we also have wine valley down here, like Valle Guadalupe. So there's a lot of stuff. I mean, you need a professional to run it all, I guess. So.

Scott Fielder (20:28)
you

Chris (20:45)
Yeah, killer, killer. Well, Scott's a lot closer to you, but I would love to come down there and get some beers with you sometime, that's for damn sure.

Scott Fielder (20:47)
Thanks.

Jesus Martir (20:57)
Nice, I mean we have a Charles Porter from Little Beast Brewing has been coming down here and he's a great guy. He's from Bend I think, I don't know, Oregon

Scott Fielder (21:08)
Oh, okay.

Chris (21:08)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's cool. OK. He's he's here in Portland, right?

Jesus Martir (21:15)
Yeah, I think so.

Chris (21:16)
Yeah, okay. I'll ping him. I actually judged with him at GABF, I think like two years ago. So I haven't seen him since, but it's been on my to -do list to try and link up with him.

Jesus Martir (21:28)
Heh.

I just sent my application today actually for GABF so maybe a couple of years, I don't know.

Chris (21:36)
Nice. Killer. Oh, that's great. That's very cool. I...

Scott Fielder (21:41)
Mine's in too, I hope we can just start at the same time. That'd be cool. Then we can just all hang out at GABF.

Jesus Martir (21:44)
That'd be great.

Chris (21:45)
Yeah, I think things have changed. But yeah, it took me like, I don't know, six, six or something years to get the call. I think things have been shuffled up a lot.

Scott Fielder (21:55)
Yeah, there's all these, I was gonna say there's all these rumors about like they're trying to up the number of what they're cycling through, but I don't know if anybody really knows what they're, I think only they know what they're doing. That's about it.

Chris (22:08)
Yeah, I mean, I understand their desire to not share that information. It's just it's not like everyone would be like, oh, you're doing a great job. That's wonderful. That's just inevitably not how that would go. But it is it is really fun.

Scott Fielder (22:14)
Yeah. Cause...

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah, for sure.

Chris (22:29)
Awesome. So yeah, hopefully I still am getting the invite by the time you all both get your invites And then we can all hang out in Colorado together It is it is quite a scene it is quite a scene All right, Scott you got any last questions or comments?

Scott Fielder (22:38)
Yeah, that'd be cool.

Nope, no more questions. I mean, again, Jesús was a great, he was somebody who we were just right out of the gate. We knew he was gonna be successful. You can just tell the people who are using the material, the people who are showing up to lots of the meetups, and those are the kinds of people who are gonna be doing super duper well. And people who are not only doing most of the work, but also have experience too, and are still doing the work because of it. There are people who definitely are.

I think a little disappointed that maybe some of their experience they had isn't supplementing as much of the studying and then they realize they actually have to study. Cause that's, you know, one thing we really try and tell folks is like, this is to help you so that when you actually study, like you are going to then execute with all of that knowledge correctly. Not that you don't have to study if you do the program. That's definitely not what we want you coming into the program thinking we need people who are willing to put in, you know, the time to do that kind of stuff. Cause those are going to be the.

Chris (23:22)
Yep.

Yeah.

Scott Fielder (23:43)
the success stories like Jesús.

Chris (23:46)
For sure, for sure, yeah. And you know, I guess I'd be remiss not to, I think, well, we kind of went over this when Scott and I did, when I interviewed Scott for this podcast, but you know, there's no reason not to do a one minute breakdown of what the program's all about. So, if you're interested, you should reach out to Scott or I anytime. The cohorts, we start a new cohort like every six months or so.

And there are several months of like pre boot camp prep reading to do so hit us up like ASAP so we can get you started. And then we do three months of weekly boot camp lessons where we teach about the different areas, you know the the different areas on the syllabus of knowledge, and also how to approach each section of the exam. So, you know, like you kind of mentioned, Jesús.

One of the things I think that are that we provide that is most valuable is just like total understanding of what the test is going to be like and how to answer all the questions like we you know, the amount of knowledge that you need to have is more than we can teach you. So you know, you it's obviously on students to learn a lot of the stuff and we're totally here to help you. We've got your study schedule, yada, yada, yada. But really, we're we're a lot of what we're teaching is how to approach the test.

And then the next three months, we do a weekly tasting where we break a beer down. Everyone brings the same beer. We break it down together. We inevitably end up going on all these tangents about like the ingredients the beer is made with or the techniques that it's made with. You know, you want to know all about decoction. Let's talk about the decoction, you know, stuff like that. And then we also do some practice, full practice exams with folks. We grade one of them.

You know, if anybody wants to do their or, you know, practice oral exams, one on ones, we do that, all that kind of stuff. So we're with folks until they pass. You know, there's like six months of structured stuff, six months of weekly lessons. And then, you know, we're all in this community together online and people can ask anything and we're always available for folks and we just stick with them until they get the job done. So that's kind of the, the, the elevator pitch.

I guess the actual pitch would be this.

Pass on your first try. Do you know prep for this exam with us? Learn how to beat it and then go beat it on your first try. That's that's the pitch. This is the easiest possible way that you can become an Advanced Cicerone and I have personally witnessed Scott Fielder AC Scott Fielder whip many many a Certified Cicerone into shape for the Advanced exam. Jesús you are the first. You'll always be our first. We'll never forget you.

Jesus Martir (26:35)
Hehehehe

Hahaha.

Scott Fielder (26:41)
Yep.

Chris (26:41)
And we're just super excited for you and we just we know we'll be seeing you all around on the scene probably be judging with you and we're excited to see where your career goes.

Jesus Martir (26:42)
Hehehehe

Chris (26:56)
And yeah, well, you're still in the community with us. So hopefully you'll pop in. Feel free to come hang out and taste beers with us anytime.

Jesus Martir (27:05)
At least it's time for fun, right? Not just technical descriptors.

Scott Fielder (27:08)
That's right.

Chris (27:09)
That's right.

Scott Fielder (27:11)
That's right.

Chris (27:12)
That's right, oh my god, the breath, the sigh of relief after you get those scores. I remember it.

Jesus Martir (27:18)
Yeah, at least I was talking with my wife and I was like, I'm so glad this is over. I mean, I'm glad that I get to know all this stuff and I get to study, but I'm so glad it's over, at least for a couple months.

Scott Fielder (27:29)
Yeah. Yep.

Chris (27:31)
Right? And that leads inevitably to the next question, which is, you gonna take the Master?

Scott Fielder (27:35)
Yeah, everybody has to ask themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jesus Martir (27:39)
Everyone's, I mean, I have a Master's right now going on, but we'll see. But yeah, I mean, at least for me, I think it's really important to also know like the barriers that are for the certification. I mean...

Chris (27:42)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Fielder (27:45)
That's a different one now.

Jesus Martir (27:54)
Spanish speaking Advanced Cicerones we're only five in the world and it gets pretty hard. I mean, at least for me, I took the exam because I can cross to San Diego because it's basically five minutes away. But I know a lot of people that can't. So maybe now that we have more Spanish speaking Advanced Cicerones maybe we can start having all Spanish exams and things like that, maybe in Latin America. I don't know. We'll see, but hopefully the barrier breaks down.

Chris (28:19)
Yeah.

Scott Fielder (28:19)
Yeah, and well, and I think that goes also beyond just it being an exam that's in Spanish, but that also represents beer communities like yours. If there are really good classic examples in the area that you're in, you all, if you start proctoring exam, you should be able to use those as classic examples. It shouldn't just be a US focused or import focused.

uh you know exam when especially when it comes to the tasting exam or if people are going to write about beers on you know their essays or or what have you uh it expands to to that too because that's obviously one thing we've noticed in our you know in our our tastings is that you know we encourage people to buy the same beers that we're getting but you know distribution is a thing and even people in the United States sometimes we can't get the same beers uh you know as as Chris and I are getting or you know what or whatever so we just ask them to get you know a local example.

But it's still a good example. Like that's the thing we have to remember, right? Like the BJCP is a good set of guidelines that we use, but it's not just the end all be all for good examples of beer. And so I hope it, I hope it also does that as well.

Chris (29:33)
Yeah, that's a real challenge for everybody involved in this kind of stuff. I'm in Portland, Oregon, an infamous, or famously great, not infamously, famously great beer town. And Scott is down there in SoCal, just surrounded by one of the best, the world's greatest beer scenes. And we struggle to get some of this stuff. So yeah, it's kind of frustrating. Well, Jesús thanks so much for hanging out. Yeah.

Jesus Martir (29:42)
Hehehehe

Thank you.

Scott Fielder (30:00)
Yeah, it was fun.

Chris (30:03)
I am, one of the things that I've been thinking is that the beer world doesn't need any more like two, three hour long, drunken, long form podcasts. So we're keeping these tight. We really appreciate you being here and we wish you the best as you go forward in your career. And thanks for, yeah, thanks for being our first. We'll see you soon.

Jesus Martir (30:15)
Hehehehe

Scott Fielder (30:26)
and we'll see you soon.

Jesus Martir (30:27)
Yeah, thank you. Hopefully we'll see you soon. Yeah, let's have some beers.